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Yorkshire Brawn

A stew of pig's head and feet cooked in water with salt, pepper, and sage, then chopped and set in molds.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and sage match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,388 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Yorkshire Brawn

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the meat

  1. Thoroughly cleanse the pig's head and feet.

  2. Cut the head and ears into pieces.

  3. Place the pieces in a stewpan.

  4. Cover with water.

  5. Add salt, pepper, and chopped sage.

  6. Bring to a boil.

  7. Simmer gently until all the meat is off the bones.

Set the brawn

  1. Remove the meat.

  2. Chop the meat in a hot basin.

  3. Add the cooking liquid to the chopped meat.

  4. Stir well.

  5. Pour into earthenware jelly molds.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Pepper + sagetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,388 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Pig's head
Provides the meat and natural gelatin that help the brawn set when cooled.
Pig's feet
Their collagen-rich skin and bones release gelatin into the cooking liquid, helping it set firm.

The step that matters

Simmer gently until all the meat is off the bones. A gentle simmer extracts gelatin from the bones and connective tissue without toughening the meat. Boiling hard can make the meat stringy and cloud the liquid.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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